


it's not easy having yourself a good time

by meguri_aite



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, M/M, Roadtrip Shenanigans, Yuletide Treat, brothels bars and bickering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: A man, a woman and a vampire walk into a brothel.Or, Alucard isn't having a good hair day.





	it's not easy having yourself a good time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



The first thing they notice when they enter the town is the low laughter and even lower necklines in the windows of a house with no conspicuous sign over its doors. Belmont lets out a long, appreciative whistle.

“Does the sight of a brothel bring you so much joy?” Alucard asks.

“Not for any personal reason, no,” Belmont says, cheerfully insincere. “Just thinking about how easy this town must have had it, to still have a working whorehouse. Besides, I’m broke,” he adds as an afterthought.

Alucard sighs but doesn’t comment; neither the crudeness nor the insight are all that surprising at this point, not after so many days spent together on the road. Few settlements feel safe enough to light the fires at night, let alone open any doors to those seeking entertainment. So Alucard settles for catching Sypha’s eye for a sympathetic eyeroll — but finds unholy fire in her stare instead.

If he weren’t a creature of the night equipped with all the demonic reflexes of a vampire, he’d have stumbled. The way things are, Alucard just carefully wagers, “Are you alright, Sypha?”

“Never better,” she says, not taking her eyes off the brothel. The predatory tone in her voice registers with Belmont, too, who leans in to get a closer look at her face. “Brilliant, actually. Do you think they have a bath? They have to have a bath, right? I’m sure there are some clients who want hygiene with their service.”

At this, Belmont does miss a step. “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Your own standards were never that high?” Alucard raises a brow.

“Saying you can’t see them from your high horse? Probably,” Belmont says with an easy shrug. “But Sypha, if thinking about getting naked with some soap and water is what gets you hot and bothered, brothels are not the only place you can go for that.”

Belmont gives her an unconvincing stern look, which Alucard supposes is meant to remind Sypha of her delicate feminine sensibilities. Sypha takes it the only way a woman who spent her lifetime dressed a boy and the last few weeks forced to live like one in the company of fur coats, vampires and Belmont — she ignores him completely.

“We’re going in,” she says.

 

They don’t immediately go in. Alucard haggles for a fifteen-minute delay to make a quick run of the nearest area, and establishes there are no available rooms elsewhere. There are a few taverns buzzing with crowds (and cheap ale, Alucard’s nose confirms) but they don’t have rooms to let, and while he can see a lot of private houses with their lights on, he is not about to start knocking on strangers’ doors just to use their warm water. Even in a town that’s eerily abuzz with life like a tightly wound-up mechanic doll still going in circles even when no one is looking anymore, it would appear they will have no warmer welcome than lights in the grimy windows of a whorehouse.

By the time he gets back to report their lack of alternatives, Sypha looks ready to storm the doors on her own, and Belmont is toying with his whip in a way that suggests using it to tie her to the nearest pole has occurred to him once or twice.

“So we’re going in, then” he says, flexing his shoulder. “What a time to be alive! Is the coin going to come from your travel budget? Cause I don’t think the Elder provisioned his granddaughter for these kinds of expenses.”

“How much can they possibly charge?” Sypha is undeterred. “We’re not going to rent a harem. Just one prostitute, maybe.”

“What are you going to do with her?” Alucard can’t help asking. Her enthusiasm for something that will likely end in fleas and disappointment is catching, if misguided.

“Have our way with her, of course,” Belmont says, wiggling his eyebrows. “All three of us, in one room. Your vampire pockets may be deep, but we gotta stay thrifty.”

“Two rooms,” Sypha says immediately. “You can have your way with her while I soak all this grime off.”

 

The matron, a woman reasonably well-preserved for her trickling third score of years, is moderately pleased to see them. She is much more pleased to see the coin, which catches the light when it passes from Belmont’s hand to hers.

“You gentlemen want to stick together? And a large bath, huh. That will cost you extra.” She winks at them. “My girls are good, but they need a little more reward for harder work.”

Alucard side-eyes Belmont, but he seems to have lost his taste for bargaining in the cleavage of the nearest blonde. So much for the experience Belmont flaunted when he bossed them around, telling Alucard to keep his hood so low that he had to squint through the fabric to see anything, and wrapping his filthy cloak around Sypha.

“Your eagerness is good, it will let you pass for a boy who can barely keep it in his pants,” was his sage advice to her. “Just keep your mouths shut, both of you. I’ll handle this.”

If the pause grows any longer, Sypha’s presumed youthful virility will make her take the brothel by force, Alucard thinks, and gently steers Belmont back the conversation with a kick to his shin.

“Sure,” Belmont gasps out, and lets another coin fall into the matron’s hands. So much for thriftiness and concern for the vampire budget. “Just send the girls with water in, first. Before, you know, they come to stay.”

Matron clicks her tongue in apparent approval — of their unfounded generosity, the eager spring in Sypha’s steps, or godliness and cleanliness, Alucard will never know.

Turns out, their money got them two joined rooms, separated by heavy velvet curtains of questionable cleanness and unquestionable tackiness. Sypha kicks both the servant girls and her companions out of the farthest room with frightening efficiency, but not before Belmont can charm one of the girls into bringing them another tub in the second room. Alucard’s gratefulness is inversely proportional to the enthusiastic suggestiveness that surrounds the request, but in between giggles and curve-rubbing and offers to join them right here and now, “to scrub your back”, they manage to get several luxurious buckets of hot water just for themselves.

Belmont grins and hisses and groans as the hot water douses his shoulders. There are splatters everywhere, contributing to the effect of a large happy animal playing at a summer lake. Must be the fur coat, Alucard thinks. It is still lying on the floor where Sypha dropped it, and even its number one fan and advocate doesn’t seem to care that it has reverted to its original state of a  dirty floor rug.

“Thinking on your feet — that’s what makes a tactical genius,” Belmont says eventually, after they are both done washing. He seems loath to take his feet out of the bucket, and instead chooses to drag it closer to the bed, where he can stretch out and let his toes dip into the still warm water.

“Mm?” It is pretty doubtful that between the two of them they have a straight thought or bone at this point — the tension has seeped away along with the cold, leaving only a sleepy haze behind. It’s a marvel what some hot water and towels can do to a man, after weeks of sleeping on the cold ground. It elevates the soul above earthly concerns like aching feet and Belmont constantly running his mouth. Alucard is feeling downright companionable right now.

“I think if we had to wait for Sypha to finish, we’d be still queuing behind the curtain.” Belmont says without looking up at him. Even on his own, he manages to take up almost the entire bed, heavy arms spread bonelessly, face blissfully turned up to the ceiling — quite the contrast to his compact, fitful sleep huddled under furs that Alucard has witnessed on the road. As if to prove Belmont’s point, the sound of happy splashing carries from the other room. “So, I’m saying. Quick thinking, this thing. Go, me.”

Alucard smiles, secure in the knowledge that his moment of weakness to Belmont’s nonsense will remain unseen between the sheet of his own damp hair and Belmont’s reluctance to move a muscle.

“Can’t wait to invite the ladies in? Impress them with your tactical brilliance?” he says, leaning back in his wooden chair.

“Only if they promise I don’t have to move,” Belmont says, with earnest dedication to the bed and his current place on it.

“They’ll probably charge you extra for that.”

“Their grasp on the basic economics is pretty strong,” he says. “Speaking of that, though.”

“You want to talk about _economics_ in a king sized bordello bed?” Alucard flips away the mass of his hair to better shoot Belmont an arch look. It’s really unfortunate he knows exactly what Belmont’s talking about, however.

“Yeah. Talk dirty to me, vampire,” Belmont says with zero inflection. “The lack of garlands of entrails and dead babies gets me hot under the petticoat.”

Alucard hums. “None of the smell for miles around, too.” He doesn’t have to specify what kind; there is probably no name for the odorous trail of the horde, which is hard to imagine and harder to wash out of your skin. “Just food and sweat and other signs of human life.”

“Downright poetic soul you got there.”

Alucard huffs and prods one of Belmont’s obnoxiously limp arms to clear an edge of the bed for himself. The chair is not that comfortable, and he won’t be goaded into stretching out on the dirty floor when there is a perfectly serviceable bed in the room, so Alucard takes up a spot with his back to the bedframe, and lets his hair down over it to have it dry quicker. “Would take a human to find poetry in the smell of stale ale and piss, I guess.”

He has an unobstructed view of Belmont giving him a very theatrical eyeroll, and then Belmont shifts and props himself up on his elbow to get a better look at Alucard. Doesn’t enjoy the view from below, probably.

“Seriously, though. It doesn’t look like the horde has ever been here — and if they have, I’d like to know how they kept the hellspawn out of their town long enough to rebuild it.”

That much is true: the creatures are both very efficient in bringing about ruin and devastation, and have a habit of returning for more. But that isn’t the only mystery. Because even in places raided only once, the wounds left by the Hell’s horde will fester before they can have a chance to heal: diseases are born in rotting gutters, despair dismantles whatever social institutions survive the attack, morale crumples soon after the city walls. But a son of the house of Belmont would know that just as well, so Alucard only nods.

“It is a curiosity. But we cannot afford to lose time investigating individual small-town oddities. Our mission’s stakes are higher.”

“I hope that wasn’t a pun,” Belmont squints at him. “I’m not ready to admit you have any sense of humor yet.”

“That’s because I don’t.” Alucard says flatly. The fact that he is on board with their mission doesn’t mean he finds any joy in the idea of killing his father — a fact that Belmont has repeatedly failed to acknowledge or come to terms with. There isn’t a single apologetic line on his face, but at least Belmont doesn’t pursue this train of thought. Alucard counts his mercies; both of them are probably too tired to go through this conversation again, so they just sit in silence for a while.

“Sypha will disagree with you,” Belmont says, eventually. “Speakers can’t let such things go, they gotta poke their nose into everything. What if it can _help_ other people. All knowledge is _precious_ ,” he says in a ridiculously thin voice that misses Sypha’s pitch by a mile, and then adds under his breath, “but god forbid anyone actually wants to write it down to prevent its loss.”

“I can hear you talk shit behind my back, you know!” Sypha yells from other room. “It’s one of my special skills.”

“It probably didn’t get enough exercise before we met,” Belmont shouts back. “I’m helping you hone it.”

Sypha’s laughter is high and clear. Belmont grins, and Alucard too sits more comfortably, letting his head rest against the bedpost. This has to be the most comfortable night they have had since they left Gresit.

He doesn’t turn his head when the door opens. The rustle of clothes and smell of cheap perfume tells him it must be the prostitute, so Alucard just reaches with his foot to nudge Belmond in the ribs. But Belmonts is already alert — more than that, his eyes go wild, and in one heavy movement, he rolls over to the opposite end of the bed.

Alucard sharply turns back, which turns out to be a mistake.

With a shrill “You fucking bitch!” the prostitute throws an entire bucketful of dirty bathwater into his face.

His eyes sting.

His open shirt immediately clings to his skin, and he can feel the dirty rivulets run down the length of his hair and onto his back.

With a dull thud, the whore drops the wooden bucket and cries, “Holy God watching over Christendom!” in pretty much the same voice she used for _fucking bitch_.

The bed starts shaking, and Alucard just knows, without having to look, that it’s Belmont’s silent laughter.

“I’m so sorry!” the woman says, clutching her skirt and a towel in a way that suggests she is ready to use them to either mop the floor or Alucard’s face. “I just — you weren’t calling, and I thought I heard a woman’s voice, and bringing a different whore to this house is really bad manners and — I —”

She loses her train of thought at about the same time as Belmont loses his composure, whose full-body laughter is just as loud and obnoxious as the rest of the unbearable man.

“I — didn’t think you were — busy with each other,” the woman stammers. “I’ll — send someone in later, to mop the floor. Should have told the madam, we wouldn’t have interrupted.” With a wobbly curtsy, she retreats with her back to the door. “Will you be needing more hot water, good sirs?”

“Just. Go.” Alucard spits out the words along with a stray strand that got plastered across his face. “ _Now_.”

As soon as the door closes behind the wretched whore, Belmont flips the sodden covers off his end of the bed, picks his disgusting fur coat off the floor, and after a perfunctory shake, throws it over the bare mattress and lies down on it. He looks as smug as the cat who ate the cream, and completely dry, the bastard. Alucard contemplates his wet pants and murder.

Drawn to the scene like a vulture sensing carnage, Sypha descends on them, pink-faced and wrapped in more towels than Alucard would have ever thought the brothel had, let alone offered for a single bath.

“If you are going to say something now, be quick about it,” he bites off.

She gives him one long good look, and then says, “There is a bucket of clean water still left, in my room. It’s probably not very warm by now, but you can use it.” Before Alucard can do something stupid, like call Sypha his favourite prophesied companion, her face breaks out in a smirk. “Can’t have the competition look anything less than her best.”

Belmont laughs again, unsympathetic. Figures.

 

It is when Alucard is back — his shirt is too wet for anything except being draped over the foot of the bed to dry, there are no more dry towels and he has given up trying to squeeze the water out of his hair — that the conversation returns to the town mystery.

“So you also think something is off,” Sypha says. She is curled next to Belmont — more accurately, she has forced Belmont off one half of his terrible rug, spread one of the towels over the fur and now sits cross-legged over it, seemingly in perfect comfort. Unlike Belmont, who doesn’t seem too happy to be banished to the end of the bed, but doesn’t attempt to invade her space; one of his few atavistic gentlemanly oddities. “Let’s investigate it!”

Alucard tilts back in his chair, stretches his legs and rests his feet at the edge of the bed. “Don’t think so.” He pushes one foot against the bed frame and rocks his chair.

Belmont snorts. “Toldya.” He makes a half-hearted attempt to knock Alucard’s foot off the bed with his own, misses, and pretends that it was never his intention in the first place.

“But you agree it’s something unusual,” Sypha presses, undeterred. “And it’s not even unusual _bad_ for once.”

“If things are not too bad here, shouldn’t you be thinking of applying of your Speaker wisdom to places that are in greater need?” says Alucard, without much hope of convincing her. The bath had quenched some of her urges, but evidently not the fire in her eyes. But one of them has to be the voice of reason: they didn’t have time to spare to look into this town, even if the irregular energy of it set Alucard’s teeth on edge. “We still don’t know if we have the right coordinates for Dracula’s castle, and the sooner we find it out, the more time we have to check out other possible locations. Losing time on something irrelevant is a luxury we can’t afford.”

“One day,” she says. “That’s all I ask. We need to stock up on provisions anyway, and I wanted to see if I could find a pharmacist in town. A real one.” Her lips curve in distaste. The last time villagers pointed them to the hut of a local doctor, the man suggested pressing a dead frog to a shallow stab wound on Belmont’s arm and ten Ave Marias. They voted for cauterizing it with Sypha’s fire instead. Alucard can’t share his regenerative powers without the rest of vampirism, so she has a point. Even light travelers need some essentials, and they are short on everything but determination.

“Are you prepared to walk in the dark? We should leave town no later than sunset, or earlier, if you are done investigating.” For Alucard, nighttime is vastly preferable, but even with him leading the way, the humans trip and stumble in the dark, and their pace becomes excruciatingly slow. The reverse, with him wrapped in layers of clothes to stave off the worst of the daylight sun, which eats into his stamina like acid into soft stone, is a better compromise. If the prospect of a night march isn’t enough to dampen her spirits, he guesses the itch might be worth investigating.

“Yes,” Sypha nods, business-like. “That’s only fair. We have to keep going on.”

Belmont groans. “Does anyone plan to ask me what _I_ want to do?”

No one does.

 

In daylight, the town looks even more alive and thriving — and for that, even more disquieting.

They have split up some time earlier: the sooner they are done with their errands, the more time to look into the mystery and the sooner they can leave. Sypha needed to restock her medical supplies and would go looking for a pharmacist. Belmont had volunteered to talk to the townsfolk to see if there were any clues to the oddity of this place but was summarily banned as soon as it became clear he meant to do so in local taverns — “the barkeep always has all the news, don’t you understand, and loose tongues tell all kinds tales, unhand me you woman” — and sent for provisions to the marketplace instead.

This is how Alucard finds himself walking in the opposite direction, away from the town center and closer to the seedier streets where Belmont wanted to do his _intelligence_ gathering. Someone has to do it, and better if that person can be trusted not get inebriated to an inch of his life in the process.

Soon enough he starts thinking that maybe they should have let Belmont go, after all: he would have melted into this crowd seamlessly. The people Alucard sees in the streets, spilling out of taverns, leaning against walls or passed out face-down in the gutter — they all look carefree drunk and rowdy, in the middle of the bloody day, with many daylight hours until work usually ends. No one looks starved, a few people he sees are waving their ale tankards rambunctiously — to toast or to score a point with their audience, or likely both. On one occasion, witnessing a heated conversation, Alucard has to duck to let a stale piece of meat pie fly over his head.

He wraps his cloak tighter around himself and walks faster, trying to banish the beginnings of an imminent headache from his head. Midday is always the hardest for him, even on cloudy days like this one, and he is not in the mood to chat up drunkards.

He wonders, if so many people are idle and drinking — and it doesn’t seem to be the grim, determined way people drink themselves into oblivion, hoping to lose consciousness when it is about the only thing they have left to lose. Indeed, there are no garlands of entrails or other festive attributes of the hell horde, but with so many people crowding the taverns, he wonders who is left to work to make a day-to-day living. He tries a few shops — they are open, and apparently in business, but he doesn’t learn anything useful except of course they are working, the mayor expects things to be running, and thanks to him, they are running, thank you for your patronage good sir, will there be anything else because they have a busy day ahead, busy indeed.

As if this town was not a part of Wallachia. As if the weird energy that vibrates through the town repelled outside reality like a force field, resonating with the pain throbbing in his temples until it threatens to cloud his vision.

Alucard has to swerve sharply to avoid running into a man who can clearly no longer hold his liquor or himself upright. He really doesn’t like drunkards, Alucard thinks.

The sun breaks out from behind the clouds, sending a shooting stab of pain through his skull, and Alucard decides to try his luck indoors. Because his reflexes even at half-power are better than a human’s, he doesn’t exactly stumble into the nearest tavern, but it’s a pretty damn close thing. Alucard winces and rubs a hand over his eyes.

“A tankard of something from the tap,” he says, sliding onto one of the bar stools. It doesn’t matter if it’s fermented horse piss — he has learnt to imitate drinking anything, which is certainly less trouble than asking for a glass of water in a fine establishment like this, if his goal is to stay low.

Odors, though. Odors are always harder. The sense of smell is right up there in the short list of vampire features he’d have liked to be able to turn off at will.

The place is too crowded and loud for this hour of the day, just like all other taverns he has passed in this town. Shelter from direct sunlight is about the only advantage it can offer. Alucard sighs, trying not to inhale too deeply, pulls the hood of his cloak deeper over his head, and tries to find the stillness that would let him wait out the worst of the headache.

“Hey there, pretty thing.”

The voice that reaches him from one of the tables to his left is about as unsavoury as the house special sloshing in a mug the barkeep slides his way. He slides back a small coin and stares into the drink, his reflection in it distorted by the thin stream of bubbles breaking the surface.

“Hey there, I said.” The man rises from his bench, deaf and blind to any body language clues, and approaches him on uneven feet. Alucard spares him half a glance, which the man seems to take for an encouragement: his face splits into a grin like an overripe tomato, revealing square yellow teeth, and he leans into Alucard’s space. “Haven’t seen you around.”

“I’m just passing by,” Alucard says, neutral.

“I haven’t seen you around,” the man continues, as if Alucard hadn’t just spoken, “but my mates, they’ve seen you.” He grins even wider, giving an unsolicited full view of his gums, which could be in a better condition. “Snooping around, dropping by the shops, not buying nothing, asking questions ‘bout this and that.”

The man suddenly interrupts his speech to inspect the contents of Alucard’s tankard. “You ain’t drinking anything, friend. That house brew not to you liking?” He laughs — a surprisingly thin sound for a man his size —  and slides the tankard back across the bar, leaving a trail of liquid. “Bring the man here something better. Let him have the good stuff before his sour face goes back to drinking vinegar.”

That gets him a laugh out of barkeep, and a mug of something with actual foam on top for Alucard — not that it smells much more appetizing.

“Here, it’s on me,” the man whispers conspiratorially, moving it even closer to Alucard. “Forget whatever’s bugging you. Things will work out.”

“How will they?”

“Ah, here you go, asking questions again. We don’t like people asking too many questions. Look what happens to those who do — and look at us, in one piece and literally swimming in happiness — aren’t we, my man?” The thin laughter makes another appearance, and then the man helps himself to a generous gulp from Alucard’s tankard. In fact, it’s less of a gulp and more of a drawn-out drainage of whatever’s in there; Alucard watches the rhythmic movements of the man’s Adam apple with every gulp he takes.

“Shouldn’a asked,” the man huffs out on a long exhale, finally lowering the mug. ”Shouldn’t break your pretty face with hard questions,” he says, admonishing.

With a heavy sigh, and in a slow motion that Alucard can trace with his eyes but not yet process, the man lands the empty tankard on Alucard’s head with enough force to shatter it.

The tankard, not his head, though the first instance of pain could have fooled him.

Alucard’s reflexes kick in, not waiting for the midday fog or headache to clear from his head, and fly him out of his chair before the man registers the movement. He doesn’t want to harm anyone, but this town has already hit its quota of how much shit it can pour on him, and it’s not even a fucking rain of acid or hellfire — which look downright preferable at this moment.

He reaches a hand to squeeze the man’s neck just fast and hard enough to immobilize him without any permanent damage: his mouth opens into a lopsided O-shape, and his pupils twitch, catching some movement behind Alucard’s back.

Instead of turning his head, Alucard swings around, the weight of the man’s body hanging off in his outstretched hand — just in time for another guy to crash a stool into his mate’s back. The man jerks violently in Alucard’s grip, a rasp tearing through his crushed windpipe, and there is an unpleasant snapping sound. Bone or wood or both, Alucard doesn’t care at this point. He just wants to leave. His headache isn’t getting any better.

But there is already a small crowd closing around him, barricading an easy way out. Through the fog in his head, he tries to calculate a way to throw them off himself and across the room without breaking anyone’s neck, if he can — limbs are fair game, he’s not feeling very charitable, to be honest — and makes note of real and makeshift weapons in the room.

He snaps his back backwards in a swift backbend to avoid the swoosh of a heavy club, putting all his weight in his legs, and then throws someone else in the way of another tankard flying through the air — he is starting to suspect this is a common entertainment in this town, but can’t muster any enthusiasm for it. Another feat of acrobatics helps him avoid a punch, and his attacker trips and stretches on the floor with the force of his momentum. Alucard kicks him in the kidneys to make sure the man stays there.

Another pair approaches him in a sloppy pincer move, so Alucard pushes himself off the bar and into the air to expand his reach and knock the men into each other with a spin kick. Two foreheads ram together with a satisfying thud, and the men are out of commission. The kick pushes Alucard in an opposite direction, and he uses the moment of mid-air suspension to survey the scene and count the men left standing — certainly a longer time than it would take a human to give in to gravity, but it’s about as much as he can muster at this hour. Daylight weakens his physical advantages significantly, and decimates his magic levels.

He doesn’t look where he is about to land until he’s already falling down, right towards the wreckage of the stool that probably broke the first man’s back, sharp wooden splinters rising in spikes in several directions, ready to meet him on impact.

Time slows to half its speed, and everything else fades from focus except the splinters, bared at him like hungry teeth. With inhuman flexibility, Alucard attempts to twist mid-air, to land on a limb instead of anything more vital —

With a thin hiss, something cuts through the air like a snake launching after its prey. It bites into his skin and wraps around his chest in coils, and pulls him with enough force to rattle the bones in his neck —

— and the next thing he knows, Alucard lands gracelessly on the dirty floor, having followed the trail mapped by the whip as it arced back across the room.

“If you were gonna get into a bar fight, you really should have called an expert,” Belmont says amicably. He tugs at the whip in one compact, complicated motion, and the leather cords immediately loosen their grip and fall in soft loops around Alucard. “With all due respect,” he says most disrespectfully, “I don’t think it’s your forte.”

The whip gets a life of its own in his hands — it flies up again, jumping like a cobra at the nearest man, who stumbles backwards and neatly trips another one behind him, and then it tightens around one of the table legs. Belmont gets a good two-handed grip on the whip’s handle, plants his legs more firmly for a better leverage, and pulls back.

The heavy wooden table, big enough to seat a large group, topples on its side with the screeching inertia of an old iron-bound oak gate falling closed, denying enemies entrance to a fortress. At least that’s how the town drunkards look now, confusion and betrayal on their faces, at the table cutting them off from the exit and the two strangers they had been ganging up on with so much solidarity.

With another tug Belmont untangles the whip and turns to Alucard. “If you are done partaking of the local entertainment, we should go. There is something I want you to see.” He doesn’t offer Alucard a hand, just turns away and heads for the door —  which in some roundabout way must be a sign of his concern for his well-being and dignity, Alucard realizes. Because he has not moved an inch after he landed on his ass. So he sees the minute to collect himself and his headache, which threatens to shatter his skull and spill through the cracks, for what it is, and appreciates it.

Thankfully, the sky is properly overcast again: he can count on his regeneration abilities to kick in quicker, then, and with any luck by sunset all of the pain will be gone.

Belmont waits for him outside, thoughtfully sipping a drink that he must have helped himself to on his way out of the tavern.

“They should have ganged up on the barkeep instead,” he says, raising the mug. “Its —”

“Horsepiss, I know,” Alucard says. “House special. You wanted to tell me something?”

Belmont finishes the house special in three gulps and leads the way.

“Better show than tell — that’s why I went looking for you. This shit’s weirder than Gresit, in a way.” He gives him a sideways look. “Should I be even asking if you learnt anything useful?”

“You would have probably picked up more from this crowd,” Alucard admits.

“Yeah, you’re a bit too classy to blend in, I’d say.”

Alucard snorts. Belmont should try harder if he wants to offend him. “So, not much — people seemed awfully touchy about their mayor. My impression is, they are fanatically thankful to him, thinking he’s the reason why misfortune stays away from their town. So much that they’d brain anyone asking the odd question.” He reaches to feel the bump on his head, but it’s almost gone already.

“Mm.” Belmont doesn’t seem surprised either.

They are, Alucard realizes, almost back to the center of the town. “Where are you taking me, then?”

“To church,” says Belmont simply.

And he isn’t joking, as it turns out.

They stop in front of a building that was evidently once _built_ to be a town church. Alucard just isn’t sure it can be called one now: he sees no crosses on the building, and no one in priest robes nearby, but plenty of people otherwise. They are manning the fruit and meat stalls, set up right at the church front, offering food and drinks from the barrels propped against its walls. There is a steady stream of people entering and leaving through the church doors with parcels and bundles and coin purses in their hands.

“Come inside,” Belmont says, and Alucard doesn’t even stop to question the wisdom of this decision.

The cozy market outside has already prepared him to expect something similar on the inside, but even to someone as far removed from the church as him the sight feels wrong. Altar torn off, the bare wooden bones of it serving as a display for colorful tailor’s merchandise, people haggling loudly over sacks of potatoes and cabbages, and in one corner there is a cage with a dozen chicken overseen by a phlegmatic old cow and a donkey.

“That’s. Very domestic.” It is not exactly the most _accurate_ word, but Belmont nods.

“I need you to play along,” he says, and gestures him further into the church, closer to the hall that leads to an adjacent building. “We’re meeting someone.”

Alucard follows. “Do I need to know anything in advance?”

Belmont leans in conspiratorially and lowers his voice. “I’d say bring out the lost princeling with deep pockets and one long sword up his ass, but you already got that covered,” he says, and gives him a pat on the shoulder. “So, just be yourself.”

And leaving Alucard no time to express even half of what he thinks about Belmont’s sense of humor or its timeliness, he knocks on one of the doors.

“Hello? Mister mayor, sir?”

The door that Belmont opens is an ordinary one — nothing really sets it apart in the row of identical nondescript doors. The man they see once inside, writing something into a giant ledger, is similarly ordinary: round around his face, shoulders and even hands, dressed in layers of good quality clothes. A pair of gold-rimmed round spectacles complete the picture of a typical merchant.

Well, typical enough for when Wallachia knew peace. Those stupid enough not to flee stayed to lose their trade — and that’s if they are lucky.

“Don’t call me mayor, I probably told you that already,” the man says, not taking his eyes off ledger. “It’s Stefan. Stefan Moraru. Another moment, I’m almost finished here.” Good as his word, he puts down his pen when he reaches the end of the line, cleans his glasses with a white handkerchief that he produces out of one of his many pockets, and turns his gaze on them. “I’m listening. What did you want to talk about?”

“Not me, sir!” Belmont says. “I’m just a servant, in the service of Lord Adrian.”

 _Adrian_.

The sound of his given name is a tripwire on familiar territory, a lightning jolt to his spine. No one has called him that, after his mother —  After his mother.

Never Belmont.

Blissfully unaware, Belmont blathers on. “I accompanied him here ‘cause he wanted to meet you, having heard about your work in this town. A place in good order, one that got its wits about it while everyone else is running around like headless chicken — or beheaded, as it may be. A place worth _investing_ in, if you get my meaning. People speak of you as of man who knows how to make resources work for him.”

Crude; Belmont is laying it on too thick. This entire little speech could have been avoided if only Belmont had briefed him before they went in. If he goes on much longer, Alucard will have to interrupt and dismiss him, like a good lord would have done already.

“I don’t _make_ any funds or resources work for _me_ ,” Stefan says, coolly. His spectacles catch and reflect a bit of the dull light coming from the window. “If you came here to make money, you have been misled. Though never elected mayor, a humble merchant by birth, I am here in service of the _people_.”

On the last word, his voice drops. His fingers visibly clench around his pen.

“I understand, and this is precisely why we sought you out.” Alucard steps in, before the man loses all desire to talk to him. As if on cue, Belmont plays a good servant and assumes a respectful stance a step behind; good timing on this, at least. “The town itself is a testament to that.”

Stefan’s fingers relax a little. “Yes, isn’t it great, to be able to see the fruit of your work like that?”

“I understand that you have accomplished a lot, with what resources you have. Preserving a functional oasis in a country going mad with destruction is a remarkable achievement. I would like to help keep it this way. And before we can discuss in detail how I can commit — “ Alucard lets the word hang a little, heavy with the implication of just how much there is to commit — “I’d really like to know how you manage it.”

It is a gamble, of course. But he doesn’t hesitate before ad libbing his way through this conversation: at the end of the day, what they have to lose is an answer to one riddle, and not even one they set out to solve.

“Ah, but it’s really easy! I’m surprised more people didn’t do it, actually — the solution is right there on the surface, you just have to think outside the box!” Stefan chuckles, and the sound goes on for longer than is comfortable. “If you are bound by a contract, make sure you have read all the small script in it.” He straightens in his chair, and looks at him with happy eyes. “Satan has unleashed a horde to destroy every town and city in Wallachia.”

Alucard nods, hoping it passes as encouragement.

“Every town and city,” Stefan repeats, with emphasis. “You know what makes town a town? And city a city? Besides a census, of course.”

“A church in every town,” says Belmont, hollow. “And a cathedral in every city.”

Alucard has a distinct, sinking feeling of deja vu.

“Or a cathedral, yes!” Stefan agrees enthusiastically, clapping his round soft hands together. “And it’s really simple after that. The loophole is right there: if you want to bypass a contractual provision, instead of arguing with its nature, just ensure that you are out of its scope.”

“A technicality, surely,” says Alucard, genuinely puzzled.

“But one that evidently works,” Stefan counters, unfazed. “The rest is just logistics. Remove all unfavourable evidence — make sure you fall out of scope, so to say — and keep the money inside the city walls, safe with the people. Few are tempted to go outside these days, and investors, as your manservant has put it, are even more rare,” he says without any inflection, as if commenting on the state of the weather. “But if you want to contribute, to let your money work for the benefit of the town, I can’t see why not.”

“That sounds — reasonable,” Alucard says, finding words that don’t feel like lead on his tongue. “If you’d allow me some time to come up with a suitable proposal for you?”

Correctly interpreting it for what it was — a request for more time, and a repeat visit — Stefan Moraru waves them away. Belmont politely waits for Alucard to leave first, and closes the door behind both of them.

 

“Something is not right,” Alucard says. They are back to the central marketplace — the outdoor one, because neither of them finds the idea of staying inside a desecrated church particularly cozy — and he is seated in the shade behind a bigger tent, while Belmont enjoys the afternoon sun and a red apple he nicked off some hapless merchant.

He takes a huge bite into the apple, incisors breaking into the red skin of the fruit with cheerful violence. “No shit. That man is literally one church short of a town.”

“I meant, something does not add up.”

“The man is a bit simple-minded,” Belmont says around another mouthful of apple. “I don’t know if the hellspawn check with the municipal bureaucrats about the status of a settlement before they tear it to the ground — do they?”

Alucard shakes his head. “His logic is a fake Occam’s razor. A solution that simple is damningly attractive, I’ll give it that. But it can’t be right. Sure, the largest cities were the first to fall under attack, but it doesn’t mean smaller settlements are safe from the demons. Dracula’s orders were — he didn’t discriminate. His war is not with the church alone. He ordered the destruction of Wallachia until there was no one left standing.”

“And when they are done taking every city wall apart brick by brick, they will turn to smaller settlements, until there are no villages left to burn.” Belmont’s tone is grim, and doesn’t sound like a question. He throws the apple core thoughtlessly behind his shoulder, and gives Alucard a considering look. “At best, a coincidence that works in Moraru’s favour, I agree. But that isn’t what you were saying earlier. Your vampire senses tingling?”

“Coincidence alone would not explain it. The odds just don’t add up — after all, didn’t we see destroyed villages along our road earlier? You could argue they were along the roads linking cities together, but that’s irrelevant. The horde doesn’t travel by roads. All of this is human logic, and demons don’t operate by it.”

“You are saying there has to be some other factor that is at work, keeping this town a jolly feast in the time of plague?”

“There is another flaw in the mayor’s theory. I mean the town’s workings,” Alucard says slowly, trying to grasp at a thought that flickered at the edge of his mind. “Keeping the money in, with the people — economies don’t work that. Some element is missing from the picture. You can’t feed all the people, keep them tucked inside the walls and peace in the streets unless —”

“ — there is a regulator policing it. And it’s not that bookkeeper.”

He probably doesn’t even suspect it, that man in a soft velvet jacket with padded elbows. He seemed perfectly content with his picture of how the world works. Someone else must have the real answers to the town puzzle, and arms long enough to keep it hidden in plain sight. And given just how leery the townsfolk are of strangers asking questions, that someone must have people on his side.

Serving as his eyes and his long arms, likely.  

Puzzle pieces start to click together with a noise like ice cracking. If there is a force in the city watching over the distribution of wealth, concerned with keeping its secrets within the walls —

“Sypha,” Belmont says, meeting his eyes in wordless understanding. “We must find her.”

They would normally meet at the marketplace once their errands were done. There is no sight of her here yet, and Alucard starts to doubt they have the luxury of time to wait for her return.

“We should head away from here, get moving towards the city gates,” Belmont says, scanning the crowd with narrowed eyes. “I think she said the apothecary is somewhere on the outskirts. We can ask someone for directions on our way.”

Alucard doesn’t argue. While he doesn’t think they are in any real danger, the idea that they don’t know what they are up against — when they don’t have time to be up against anyone who isn’t Dracula, too — adds vigor to his step despite the raging daylight.

The directions they get from an apathetic butcher at the end of the street lead them a little way off the gates. They turn into one of the smaller side streets and start peering at signs, but they don’t get very far.

Ruffled and huffing for breath, Sypha drops on them from around the corner like a wide-eyed hawk.

“Follow me,” she says. “We should leave now, but not by the gates.”

“What, did you annoy everyone so much that they are chasing us out with pitchforks now?” Belmont says.

“I have been talking to people,” Sypha says, without sparing a moment to despair at Belmont’s gallows humor. Alucard knows to read it for a sign of concern. “I guess even you two you learnt about their church and the mayor, too?”

Belmont nods, and Alucard says, “But that doesn’t make sense. If stopping the horde was as easy as destroying the church, then don’t you think someone else would have thought of that already? And it’s simply not how Dracula’s curse works.”

“Did I say anything like that?” Sypha takes a sharp turn left, leading them down a narrow street lined with poorer houses. “Of course that’s a bollocks explanation. While the Speakers have never had a particularly friendly relationship with the church, they wouldn’t have shied from this knowledge if it was true and could save people from the demons. There is no such easy cure for this epidemic, and the destroyed church is not what keeps these people shielded from the horde.”

“What is it, then, and why don’t you look too happy about the answer?” Belmont asks.

“Dark magic,” Sypha spits out with a surprising amount of vehemence for someone who can manipulate ice and fire. “The town is protected by a black magician, and he keeps sacrificing strangers to feed the curse that confuses the demons, directing them away from the town. You could say he found himself a nice, easy way to keep the town’s secret from being investigated by any nosy outsiders.”

The curse to confuse the demons. The interference powerful enough to mess with Alucard’s head, sending his mind thinking in headache-driven loops around the fact that the town’s protection is unnatural.

Outside the scope of ordinary logic, he remembers his own words. How perfectly ironic.

Belmont swears under his breath. “And the good townsfolk are his happy accomplices. My only question is, how the hell did you get anyone to talk to you about it?”

“My feminine charms, obviously,” Sypha says, and doesn’t elaborate.

“Did you fry the pants off some poor man?” Belmont hazards a guess designed to needle her into explaining more after they take another turn into a new alleyway.

High color tints her cheeks, and she purses her lips stubbornly. “The pharmacist,” she says reluctantly. “He recognized I had magical powers when I tried discreetly heating up one of his bezoar stones to see if it gave off the right smell. It didn’t look authentic,” she adds defensively.

Belmont laughs, and Alucard bites back his own smile, too.

“So he told me to run as fast as I can. If the magical protector of the city eliminates any strangers to keep his ruse, he will have no qualms about crushing any potential contender with full force if he gets a wind of it.”

They break into a run on their last turn, and leave behind them another stretch of houses, and then Alucard wagers a question of his own. “Assuming that the pharmacist is not on board with the magician’s agenda, and therefore unlikely to reveal your identity to him — why are we running like the demons are at your heels?”

“Well, I tried talking sense into one of the people rumored to be associated with the magician —”

“You did _what_?” Belmont grabs her by the arm, almost turning her off-course. “For god’s sake, woman, if you knew what they are — have you no care what happens to you?”

“I can take care of myself,” she snaps, pulling her arm out of the grip. “If I didn’t try helping people by telling them the truth, sharing my knowledge with them — yes, by _talking_ to them — what kind of Speaker would I be? A little violence doesn’t bother me, it is an argument of weak men. Besides, the burns on his palms will heal soon enough.” Color floods her cheeks again, but fire dances in her eyes.

“What knowledge can be worth walking up to the magician’s henchman and painting a target over your head?”

And now she chooses to roll her eyes at Belmont. “The kind that would make them abandon this foolish idea, of course. Look for a surviving member of their church, for when the horde returns to them. You showed it, in Gresit — the demons can be fought off with holy water and consecrated weapons. And I didn’t show him my face,” she added.

“Well, I guess you’re learning,” he grunts in acknowledgement. “But I doubt a casual practitioner of human sacrifice would be willing to heed your arguments. A strategic retreat it is, then.”

They don’t talk anymore after that: the long sprint is clearly wearing Sypha down, and while she still shows no hesitation in what turn to take and which road to avoid — must be some Speaker skill, Alucard muses, this affinity for navigation — her gait is ever so slightly slowing.

He almost halts and questions his conclusion out loud when he figures where they are going.

“Sypha, you’re not leading us back _here_?”

Even Belmont can’t muster enthusiasm at the sight of familiar doors to the whorehouse. “Do you really think it’s a good time — besides, it’s closed now. Too early for its working hours, I’m afraid.”

“Shut up,” she hisses, and raps on the nearest window in a deliberate, distinct pattern. Code, Alucard realized, just as a side door opens. The matron’s face appears, and silently raised eyebrows aside, she lets them in without a single question.

“We need to leave the city,” Sypha says, not bothering to hide her face or the voice this time. “The pharmacist said you can show us another way out.”

She nods, still every inch her businesslike self. “If Tomasz trusted you enough to share this, I’ll help. But do you know if anyone followed you, or can otherwise trace you to here?”

Sypha winces, which is answer enough.  

“I guess some of us have been pretty hard to miss, today,” Belmont adds, sending a superior smile both at Sypha and Alucard. “Can you just let us use that exist so that we’re out of sight, out of mind?”

The matron tsks in disagreement. “I can’t open the exit right away, I need some time. If there is a chance they will come here looking for you, you’d better wait them out.” She gives them a long, calculated look, like they are ingredients she is weighing before throwing into a boiling pot. “I have an idea.”

Alucard has a sinking feeling he is not going to like it, whatever it is.

 

The intruders don’t bother knocking. The door is flung open by the force of their blow, creaking in a pained way on its hinges.

“Try not to bother the customers too much, there are a few of them staying in —” the matron’s disapproving voice reaches him from behind the backs of the men who are now crowding the doorway. Alucard can’t see them from where he is lying, but their breathing and stomping gives him a pretty good guess of where they are.

Sypha lets out a soft cry of surprise. There is a rustle of skirts, a little yawn, and then a sultry “We have more gentlemen? My friend and I are quite tired, though.”

“Kept ya busy, didncha.” Belmont’s voice is lazy, syllables slurred in expert imitation of drunken smugness that comes from plenty of firsthand experience. Alucard feels a hand run through his hair, spilling it over his shoulders. A few tendrils stay caught between Belmont’s hand as it rests on his chest. A show of possessiveness for the audience’s benefit.

He grinds his teeth together and keeps motionless, tucked facedown by Belmont’s side. He tries to concentrate on the smell of clean skin to distract himself from the rancid odor of cheap liquor spilled generously in the room, soaking the air with fumes.

He does not think about the low cut of the dress sliding off his shoulders to reveal a strategically chosen section of skin on his back. Or the corset fins biting into his ribs, narrowing his waist.

“Come back to bed, wench. One is not enough, for a man like me,” Belmont drawls out. He hiccups, and lets out a laugh. “Not after a good sleep.” He makes a movement as if to rise off the bed, but his arm is firmly draped around Alucard’s shoulders, pressing him close and keeping his face hidden.

Sypha giggles — a silly sound that is nothing like her usual laughter — and returns to the bed: two steps from where she must have been stretched on the rug by the fire, Alucard guesses. She climbs on the bed, showing plenty of naked leg, and sits herself on Belmont’s chest. The hem of her flimsy underskirt brushes against Alucards nose.

It _tickles_. Suppressing the urge to scratch his face, and claw at a few other faces while he’s at it, takes up all of Alucard’s attention.

“I don’t share well,” Belmont rumbles, as his hand lays over Sypha’s knee. “So whatever you’re here for, you’d better look for it elsewhere.”

“He’s with us for the third day in a row,” the matron offers dispassionately. “If you’re looking for someone marinated in cheap booze, or someone whose brain has probably been sucked out of his dick by this point, then you have your man right here.”

The men exchange a few muttered curses.

“That’s not them,” one of the men says. “Show us to your other rooms.”

“Follow me, then,” matron sighs, and closes the door after all of them.

Sypha waits for the sound of steps to fade away, and then slaps Belmont painfully on the hand that’s still resting on her knee.

“That was uncalled for,” he grumbles, as she scrambles off his chest. Alucard shakes Belmont’s arm off his shoulder and sits up straight.

“Are you absolutely convinced we must wear these — _this disguise_ — until we’re out of the city limits?” he asks, fastidiously arranging the folds of the dress on his knees. They are the most improbable and vulgar color imaginable, not to mention the cut.

“Well, you can throw a cloak over your shoulders, as long as it’s one borrowed from the girls,” Sypha shrugs. “I have our own clothes packed in these bundles. You heard the matron — the secret trapdoor doesn’t lead right out of the city, just lets us reappear at the other end of it and very close to an unguarded stretch of the wall. If any henchmen even spot our reappearance, this way it’s easier to pass our escape off as a run for privacy.”

“Arguing with a Speaker is a waste of breath,” Belmont says.

Alucard usually hates to agree with him, but not this time. “Whatever gets us out of here fastest.”

  


The fastest way out had not been nearly fast enough.

“You know, you don’t actually need to stomp the dress into the dirt,” Sypha says. They are finally, _finally_ out of the cursed town, and she is already blanketed into her Speaker robes up to her nose — an easy fix to the problem of never having to see their disguise clothes again.

“I am not stomping,” Alucard says, ripping the bodice off his ribs in one movement, finally free to breathe with full chest.

“I thought you looked fetching in canary yellow,” Belmont says with a shit-eating grin. “Really brings out your complexion.”

Alucard thinks that Belmont would look very good dead, murdered by his own hands, but doesn’t say so. He is currently not speaking to him.

“Don’t bully him,” Sypha says with immeasurable condescension. “I think he needs to recover from all the times you smothered his face against your neck.”

“Not my fault his disguise is shit from up front,” Belmont shrugs, happy as ever to be in his own skin — and his own clothes, most unfairly. “His vampire mug is a tad too classy to pass for a prostitute.”

“Stop dissing the women, they helped us get out of the town without getting anyone killed. And I’m not talking about you two. Alucard heals faster than a god and for you I have all supplies ready.” She pats the side of her fat travel bag cheerfully.

“That actually doesn’t explain it, you know.” Belmont says casually. “I mean, the pleasure of seeing Alucard in a dress probably doesn’t balance out a danger of abetting fugitives.”

Sypha’s smile falls. “You are right. But she wasn’t protecting Alucard, she was protecting me. Same way that Tomasz, her brother, was protecting her. They already lost their other sibling to the magician when he murdered the town priest.”

“Well,” Belmont says, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned. The kids in their family sure had diverging career paths.”

Alucard doesn’t say anything. He pulls his own coat on his bare shoulders, turns his back on him, and starts walking down the road.

After all, the three of them have a bigger job to do.


End file.
